Kim Dotcom's Mega Hits One Million Users within 24 Hours

Dotcom himself appears at a larger-than-life press conference to chat all things Mega (and recreate last year's police raid on his mansion)

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Well, that didn't take long.

It's been all of one day  24 hours or so  since the launch of Kim Dotcom's new "Mega" cloud service. And if the number of users that have flocked for their free 50 gigabytes of storage is any indication, it appears Dotcom has a bit of a hit on his hands.

According to The Next Web's Owen Williams, Dotcom has announced that Mega has already pushed passed one million registered users. While that's still just a drop in the bucket compared to the hundred million users that competitor Dropbox claimed in November of last year, it's a lot faster of a ramp-up. Dropbox  and we're just using this service as an example  launched in September 2008, but only hit the official "one million user" mark in April of 2009.

Mega quickly jumped up to around 100,000 users within an hour or so of the site's official launch. A few hours after that, Mega had ballooned up to approximately a quarter of a million users. Demand was great enough to knock Mega offline for a number of users attempting to either connect up or sign up for new accounts, and Mega's availability remains spotty as of this articles' writing.

"If you are currently experiencing slow access to #Mega its because of the unbelievable demand. We are working on more capacity," clarified Dotcom in a tweet posted later that evening.

The official Mega press conference was held yesterday as well and, in addition to providing an action-packed recreation of last year's raid on Dotcom's residence by New Zealand police, it allowed Dotcom a change to discuss his intentions behind Mega. Which is to say, Dotcom sees the site as, "a platform for knowledge and education."

Of course, the service is also pretty big on privacy, given Dotcom's history. Mega, as company, has no way to tell just how its users are accessing the service (or what files they're storing and sharing) as a result of the mandatory file encryption that Mega demands of its uploaders.

Additionally, the enforced encryption means that uploaders will have to list both a link to their files and an accompanying encryption key if they're looking to share their Mega-hosted data with other people.

"By using Mega you say no to those who want to know everything about you. By using Mega you say no to governments that want to spy on you. By using Mega you say yes to Internet freedom and your right to privacy," Dotcom said.

That's not to say that those stashing files on Mega  especially copyright material  are completely anonymous. As explained by TorrentFreak, the information that Mega keeps as part of the account generation process includes records of users' IP addresses, communications, use of the site itself, and other personal information submitted during the site registration.

"While this may not be a huge issue for the mainstream, privacy buffs usually prefer more anonymity. Currently dissidents and whistleblowers are not shielded from being exposed by Mega, if the authorities come knocking," TorrentFreak's Ernesto wrote.

Mega is free for users for up to fifty gigabytes of storage. Pricing tiers for storage requirements beyond that start at approximately $13 per month for 500 gigabytes and run all the way up to around $40 per month for one terabyte of storage.

David Murphy got his first real taste of technology journalism when he arrived at PC Magazine as an intern in 2005. A three-month stint turned to six months, six months turned to occasional freelance assignments, and he has since rejoined his tech-loving, mostly New York-based friends as one of PCMag.com's news contributors.
His rise to (self-described) fame in the world of tech journalism began during his stint an associate editor at Maximum PC, where his love of cardboard-based PC construction and meetings put him in charge...
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